November, 2015

We are subject to the quirks, delusions, eccentricities, desires and secret fantasies that make up the undertow of our lives, some of which we are aware of, most of which we are not.

We try to fit concepts like ‘creativity’, ‘passion’ and ‘story’ into such neat little boxes: the five-step formulas, the slots in your calendar.

But they draw from something much deeper within us: that mysterious, symbolic world known as the unconscious.

The preverbal voices of the unconscious were once the voices of your daimon, your genie, your muse. They are not of the everyday world: checkmarks on the daily to-do list.

They need to be invoked and received.

We can’t create them; we create the conditions that invite and attract them.

That requires a routine action of stepping off the beaten path. You need that room of your own, that magic circle, that man cave, or what Joseph Campbell called your bliss station. The din of the world fades away and you drop into the murmurings of your soul. You follow your obsessions and track the truth of your authentic self.

You slow down when the world tells you to go faster; you open up when you’ve been taught to hunker down.

You accept what wants to come through you without the judgment, self-shaming and fear that sent these parts of yourself so deeply underground in the first place.